News

Allow F1 Cars to Race

Friday, 30 January 2015 @ 17:16

All in the Element79 office were glad to get the news last year that a classic Grand Prix track was to return to F1 in 2015. The Mexican Grand Prix is to make a welcome return. Sure, the old place needed to be smartened-up, modernised and bought up to modern safety standards, but that shouldn’t mean that the circuit would be robbed of its character and sanitised from a racing point of view should it?

Apparently it does. We’ve just seen the revised track layout and oh dear – another boring Hermann Tilke creation with long straights connected by ninety degree corners that stop the cars dead and constrict the racing. He’s even managed to sanitise the old Eses section with his own take on it which doesn’t appear to flow from a driving perspective. We hope we’re wrong, but it now looks an awkward re-creation of the old track which ultimately arrives at yet another full stop for the cars instead of taking the glorious old Peraltada and rewarding drivers with an opportunity to overtake.

Racing cars need to be given the opportunity to race and provide the best drivers with the opportunity to show their talent by taking the best lines through a series of challenging, flowing corners to put them in the best position to overtake at the end of that section of track. Bringing the cars to a series of sharp corners at the end of straights does nothing to assist overtaking and results in boring, processional racing. It’s about time F1 found itself a new track designer, and with concerns about the appeal of the sport to a younger generation hitting the headlines, it needs to do this sooner rather than later.